


When the Devil Came to Pluto

by tsukinobara



Category: Supernatural RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Western, Community: spn_j2_bigbang, M/M, Too many characters for one comment field, asexual!Jensen, i tried for creepy, i tried for fairy tales and mythology, westerns are the best
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-25
Updated: 2017-08-25
Packaged: 2018-12-19 13:59:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 20,930
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11899227
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tsukinobara/pseuds/tsukinobara
Summary: The New Mexico Territory in the 1870s is a vast and wild place, all scrubland and hills and mystery, home to gunslingers and miners and working girls and scattered native tribes. Jared and Jensen live in a little mining town called Pluto, keeping the peace for a brothel and occasionally checking up on the mine. The land around them is full of secrets and stories, which Jared is eager to learn and share.And then one night Jensen vanishes and Jared sets off through the desert to find him. A herd of ghost ponies brings him to the devil's front door, and even though the devil is not what Jared was expecting, he still thinks they can make a deal so he can get Jensen back.





	When the Devil Came to Pluto

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings for Chad, asexual!Jensen, a certain amount of historical handwaving, and non-CW actors. This fic is a story about stories, which means nothing's true.
> 
> amberdreams made the [really fantastic art](http://amberdreams.livejournal.com/497370.html).

You followed me into death, because I needed you. What do you think love is?  
\--Neil Gaiman, _Death: The Time of Your Life_ #3

 

_Once there was a town named for the lord of the dead. It sat in the foothills, at the edge of the desert. It was dusty and new, but prosperous enough. There was a mine there, and a train depot, and a hotel. It had saloons and a wide main street with a general store and a saddlery and a barber, a telegraph office and stables and a jail. The square wooden buildings creaked when the wind rushed across the land, and the town smelled of dry earth and cut wood and working men, and sometimes, very faintly, the breeze would bring the scent of scrubby growing things from the hills._

_Two men lived there, one younger and taller, one older and stockier, the pair of them the best of friends._

_They worked for a proud woman, doing what she needed done. They went to church on Sundays and helped their friends as needed it. They would walk around town on their business and see the hills in the distance and feel love for the land they inhabited and pride in the lives they led, for they were good men and they lived good lives._

_But from time to time the devil liked to put on a human guise and go walking among the men and women aboveground. He traveled widely, for humanity is infinite in its variety and the devil was a curious creature. Perhaps he felt drawn to the dusty town in the foothills, for in the minds of the churchgoers there, he was indeed the lord of the dead, and the lord of the sinners among them. He was walking along the main street and took an interest in the older of the two friends. This one didn't drink, nor did he fornicate as young men at that time were wont to do. The devil was intrigued by this man. And then one night the devil took him._

* * *

Jared and Jensen came to Pluto a couple of years ago for the same reason a lot of people were heading west – to make a new life, to seek their fortune. The War Between the States had been over for ten years, the Comanche and Apache were being herded onto reservations, and the country was on the move. Jared had gotten a letter from his friend Chad, telling him there was money to be made in the New Mexico Territory. Jared and Jensen were still in Texas then, at Fort Stockton, and the western territories looked exciting. And Pluto, Chad said, had a productive silver mine, good saloons, a new train depot, and a brothel full of pretty girls.

Besides, they were tired of the army. Jensen had joined a Texas regiment towards the end of the war, and Jared thought that getting away from the army and his memories of the things he'd seen and done would be good for him. When he told Jensen this, Jensen just laughed and said he wasn't so tormented by his past that the sight of drilling troops troubled his sleep. He wasn't haunted. Jared just had too much imagination.

They left Fort Stockton because Jared wanted to, and because even though Jensen shook his head in disbelief at the notion, he trusted Chad.

When they rode into Pluto, they found a good-sized town, with a nice hotel, a rooming house, a white-washed church with a steeple, shops and saloons and stables, Chad's promised brothel, a mining camp, the train depot, and a sheriff to keep law and order. The brothel was owned and run by a pretty woman named Danneel, who looked them over and said her clients were usually well-behaved, but sometimes she could use some muscle, and they looked like men who could handle themselves in a fight. So in short order, Jared and Jensen were employed.

They worked together – most of the time as Danneel's unofficial bouncers, but sometimes as undeputized security at the mine, or on short-haul cattle drives – and even shared a room at the boarding house. Once a week they both went to the bathhouse for a good scrubbing, and once a month Jensen dragged Jared to the barber for a trim. They made friends, including a tracker named Christian, who had been taken by the Apache as a boy and raised as one of their own, until white folks managed to find him and drag him back into the bosom of white civilization. Jared liked to talk to people to learn their stories – the histories of their lives or just tales they liked to tell – and while it was sometimes hard to get Christian started, he was occasionally willing to share stories from his years with the Apache.

At first the money in Pluto was inconsistent and the new life was precarious. But Jared looked west, always west, towards new places and new people and new experiences, and everywhere he'd ever lived had been precarious. Besides, restlessness was in his blood. The first Padalecki had come from Poland, when the US was still a collection of English colonies strung up and down the Atlantic coast. He'd settled in Pennsylvania, where he built a cabin and raised crops and cows and joined the local militia when the colonists decided they'd had enough of King George. Padaleckis had been heading west ever since, following the frontier as it shifted. Jared's children, or his nieces and nephews, would no doubt settle in California, having brought the family name clear across the country to where they could see the Pacific. And who knew – maybe their children would even cross it.

But the desert, that was his. He loved the mountains and the mines and the scrubby trees and the dust and the dry, beautiful land of the southwest territories. He loved having the chance to learn about and then leave his stamp on this part of the country. It held stories no white man had yet heard, stories just waiting to be shared.

The town itself, and the land it sat on, had its own tales, but not all of them were kind.

People sometimes went missing. Hunters and trackers would vanish, miners would disappear down mine shafts, farmers or ranchers would be carried off by the Apache, men on the wrong side of the law would head for Mexico and no one would ever hear from them again. Sometimes someone would mount a search party. Eddie, the brothel cook, said the desert needed a tribute, that it required payment for letting white men settle its land.

Jared didn't know if he believed that. He believed in God, and the goodness of human beings, and the possibilities inherent in the vast and barely-settled southwest. He didn't think he believed in a land with its own agenda and its own kind of sentience.

But Jensen believed in the devil, and the devil, like the desert, claimed his own.

And that, Eddie could agree with. Eddie was from one of the tribes that hunted buffalo up in the Dakotas, and how he'd come to Pluto was a mystery. But he'd let Jared and Jensen sit in his kitchen and ask questions and share gossip as long as they stayed out of his way. That was how they learned about his grandfather's younger brother, who was by all accounts a hotheaded, quick-tempered man, until he became separated from the rest of the warriors during a hunt, and didn't return for three months.

“He was changed,” Eddie said, as he kneaded dough for dinner rolls. “Not as hot. You couldn't rile him up. 'She took my heat,' he said.”

“Who took his what?” Jared asked.

Eddie shrugged. “That's what he said. 'She took my heat.'”

“He wasn't a hothead?”

“Not anymore. The same in every other way. Just not as furious. Not as short-tempered. He and my grandfather would fight all the time – wrestling, racing – but after that, he wasn't interested. My grandfather couldn't goad him.”

“Huh,” Jensen said.

Eddie shrugged again and started pulling off pieces of dough and rolling them into balls. Jensen pushed a metal tray across the counter for him, and when Eddie pulled out a towel to cover his rolls so they could rise in peace, Jared and Jensen left.

“Took his heat,” Jensen mused. “You could use that.”

“Ha,” Jared said. “I'm not that bad.”

“Danny called you impetuous.”

“That's not the same thing as Eddie's great-uncle. I'm not quick to anger. Besides, I think that was her way of telling me to stop wasting my money at the poker table.”

When a freak snowstorm hit the area one fall and a little boy went missing from a settlers' wagon train, Eddie and Christian led the search parties. Half the town and most of the miners turned out to look, some of them following the misplaced Dakota and some of them following the adopted Apache, but no one found anything – not the boy's coat, not a shoe, not even his body.

“She claimed him for tribute,” Eddie said. “The desert did.”

At least he had the decency to say so out of hearing of the boy's parents and the rest of the wagon train. The group had been heading to California, where the land was fertile and the weather was mild and there was gold to be found in the rushing rivers and the hills, and while the boy's mother wanted to stay and mourn, and the boy's father wanted to keep searching, the rest of the settlers wanted to go.

After Eddie's story about his grandfather's brother, Jared and Jensen settled themselves in the brothel parlor, Jensen at the piano and Jared at one of the poker tables. Chad had vanished up to Albuquerque for a month for what he claimed was a potential business venture, and had returned yesterday with no money and even less news. Jared and Jensen both assumed the “business venture” involved a woman, and Jared had taken pity on Chad and loaned him a stake in the poker game. Chad was trying his best to win at least enough to pay Jared back, and failing miserably.

It was a good night. There was a steady stream of clients for the girls but only two men at the other poker table, drinking and smoking and watching Kim's hands as she dealt the cards. Rob and Rich had joined Jared and Chad. Samantha, the bartender, leaned on the counter and watched the room, and every time Jared glanced her way, she was smiling.

“You don't drink, you don't fuck - “ Brianna was saying. She'd come over and sat on the piano bench next to Jensen.

“No, but I smoke and swear and shoot people.” Jensen looked up from the piano keys and grinned.

“You shoot _at_ people,” Jared added, grinning even wider. Jensen just rolled his eyes.

“Why don't you?” Brianna asked, leaning against Jensen's shoulder.

“Why don't I what?” he asked.

“Aren't we pretty enough for you?”

Jensen shrugged his other shoulder.

“He's saving himself for marriage,” Rich said.

Brianna laughed. “So am I.”

“I'll marry you, lovey,” a poker player called from Kim's table. The other man sitting there laughed. Kim allowed herself a smile.

“'Scuse me,” Brianna said to Jensen, pushing herself off him and the piano bench. She straightened out her skirts and sashayed over to the table. Jared watched the poker player finish his hand, push his chair back, take Brianna's arm, and escort her from the room.

Everyone was behaving themselves. Sometimes Jared wondered why Danneel paid him and Jensen to stand around – or sit around, as the case may be – when her house was well-run enough, and her clientele well-mannered enough, that they weren't really needed to keep the peace. Even the poker games were polite, even when the miners came to town at the end of the week, their pockets full of their weekly pay, those who could afford Danneel's girls looking to exhaust their energy with some pretty female company. And it wasn't as if he or Jensen even had to wear suits to give the place some class, as he'd heard the upper-class brothels in big cities sometimes did with their muscle.

He'd asked Danneel once, after a particularly well-behaved week, when he and Jensen had done nothing more strenuous than drink some drinks and lose some money at cards and shoot the shit with some of the clients and fellow poker players. She'd just patted his cheek and said it was because he and Jensen were so pretty.

One day an actress came to town, a blonde girl named Alona who claimed to be a disinherited Russian princess. The posters that appeared on the front of the theater and around town said she'd performed in Paris, London, New York, St Petersburg, and she was in Pluto for a month-long engagement. 

“Singing and dancing and speechifying,” Rich said one night, as he tried to win Jared and Jensen's money at poker. The pile of coins and bills in front of Jensen and Chad spoke to how successful he was. “Did you see her? She's a tiny thing. Pretty, though.”

Jared and Jensen had in fact already met her, by the simple expedient of passing by the hotel as she and her entourage were walking up from the train depot. There were four of them, trailed by several men hauling trunks of what Jared assumed were costumes and props.

He and Jensen had introduced themselves and met the group – Alona, who sounded American through and through, her manager Misha, who did have some kind of accent, and her accompanists/costars Sebastian and Anton, who either didn't speak English or just didn't want to. They were all very polite, in any case, if tired.

After the troupe had been shown to their rooms, Genevieve, the hotel owner, came back outside to tell Jared and Jensen the first show would be on Sunday.

“So you can go to church and confess your sins,” she told Jensen, “and then spend your evening at a variety show thinking sinful thoughts about the actress.” She winked at him and went back inside. Jared chuckled. All the girls in Pluto, even the ones who weren't for sale, knew that Jensen had never acted on a sinful thought about a lady in his life. Some of them doubted he'd ever even had one.

“We met her,” he said now, returning two cards to Rob, who was acting as dealer tonight, and receiving two in exchange. “She seems very nice.” He rearranged his cards and pushed a couple of coins at the pile in the middle of the table.

“Is she really Russian?” Chad asked.

“She could be.”

“Is she really a princess?”

“She didn't say.”

“Where's St Petersburg?” He'd clearly read the posters closely.

“Russia.”

“And you don't think she's really a Russian princess?”

“Not an exiled one, no.”

“Your storytelling skills are terrible,” Rob commented, giving Chad another card. Chad looked at it, slotted it into the fan of cards already in his hand, and flipped a coin into the center of the table.

“She's not going to give away all her secrets to two strangers on the street,” Jensen went on. “Even if we are two particularly good-looking strangers.”

Rich snorted. Jared lightly punched him in the arm.

“First show is on Sunday,” Jared said. “We should go.”

“I think the whole town's going to turn out,” Rob said. He looked around the table, at the pile of money, at the other men. “No more cards?” They all shook their heads. “Show 'em.”

“Son of a whore,” Jared hissed, as Chad showed his hand. Brianna, who happened to be passing the table with a well-dressed older man on her arm, paused long enough to smack him on the back of the head with her fan.

“No swearing in Miss Danny's,” she said mildly. Jared pretended to be embarrassed and the rest of the table laughed.

“All right, boys,” Rich said, standing and cracking his back, “I'm going to find myself a nice lady to soothe my wounded pride. You have a good night.”

Chad swept the pile of coins and bills closer to himself, then reconsidered and pushed a silver coin towards Rob. Rob raised an eyebrow at him.

“It's a tip,” Chad explained. “You dealt me some really good cards.”

“I'll win it all back from you tomorrow,” Rob said cheerfully.

“Keep telling yourself that,” Jensen said.

“Another game?” Jared asked. Nods all around, so Rob gathered the cards, shuffled, had Jared cut the deck, and dealt them all a hand.

It was quite late by the time they called it quits, but in that time Jensen had won his money and half of Jared's back from Chad. They'd all taken Chad's lead and tipped Rob when they won, and Rob commented that he never knew dealing could be profitable.

“It's always profitable if you work for the house,” Danneel told him. “Next time let Kim deal.”

“She already had a table,” Rob said. “You need another dealer.”

“You need to take advantage of the lovely company on offer,” she countered.

“We paid you for the use of the table.” If you were going to sit at one of Danneel's tables and play cards all night, you needed to kick a percentage back to the house. Not even Jared and Jensen were exempt from that. Chad had vanished for twenty minutes to spend some of his winnings on a pretty girl, but Jared and Jensen and Rob had sat there all night, drinking and playing cards and shooting the shit and surreptitiously keeping an eye on the place.

“Next time you can pay one of my girls for their time, too.”

“Yes'm.” He jingled the coins in his pocket. “Tell Rachel to make herself ready.”

“Rob, darlin', she's always ready for you.” She winked. “Now go home. If you're not sleeping in my beds, you should be in your own.”

Jared and Jensen strolled back to the boarding house discussing their theories about Alona's show. It had been a while since they'd gotten any performers coming through town, and they imagined her posters would bring people in from the surrounding ranches and farms, possibly even from the next town over. It would be nice for people to not have to make their own entertainment for once.

“You really don't think she's a Russian princess?” Jared asked, pulling off his boots and flopping onto his back on the bed. He maybe shouldn't have had that last whiskey.

“I don't know,” Jensen said. He hung his coat over a chair and sat on the edge of the bed next to Jared. “She talked like an American. Her manager, he sounded like he was from somewhere else.” He shrugged. “She's not going to tell us if she isn't. You can pretend she's really an exiled princess if you want.” He looked down at Jared and grinned. “What do you think?”

“I think she was exiled for... um... falling in love with an inappropriate boy. A stablehand.” There was no library in Pluto, but Genevieve let him borrow books from the hotel parlor as long as he returned them in good condition, and sometimes the girls at Danneel's let him go through their collection. His choices varied immensely, and recently he'd been bringing home a random assortment of romances.

“Not a gunslinger?” Jensen's grin widened and Jared chuckled.

“What, like me? You think I want a Russian princess?”

“Who said I was talking about you?”

Now Jared grinned. “You want a Russian princess?”

“Rich could use someone with money. I don't think falling in love with a stablehand is enough to get you exiled, though. She'd have to do something worse. Marry him in secret.”

“Misha!” Jared sat up, excited. His brain conjured clandestine meetings with a priest and a surreptitious exchange of vows and Alona's imagined father turning purple with rage and ordering her and Misha out of the house. And so they came to America, Alona performing on stage and Misha protectively acting as her manager, both of them keeping their secret. It wasn't _Romeo and Juliet_ , but neither was he Shakespeare, and as long as the story grabbed someone's attention, who cared?

“You just made up a story for them, didn't you?” Jensen said.

“Maybe.”

“Does it involve sex in the hayloft?” Jared liked to read the exciting parts of his literary finds out loud so Jensen could enjoy them too, and so Jensen had been exposed to the same quickly-written, cheaply-produced, unrealistically-plotted novels that Jared had.

Jared hadn't considered illicit hayloft sex. Now he did.

But in his imagination, it wasn't the actress and her manager he pictured.

He lay back down, closed his eyes, and tried to banish the thought of Jensen, naked and flushed, bits of hay stuck in his hair, reaching for Jared with a smile on his face.

“Don't fall asleep with your clothes on,” Jensen said from somewhere above his head. Jared sighed, opened his eyes, and sat back up. “We'll find her tomorrow and ask.”

“Ask who what?”

“Alona. Whether or not she's really Russian.”

“She won't tell us. That's what you told Rob.”

“I also said we were exceptionally good-looking, remember. Pretty faces open doors.”

But Alona just winked and asked “What do you think?” when they looked her up the next day to ask if she was really a Russian princess.

“She brought her own tea,” Genevieve told them. They'd snuck into her office to ask if she knew the truth, since Alona had been less than forthcoming. “Black tea and strawberry preserves. Who does that?”

“Russian royalty?” Jared hazarded.

“If she's not, those boys who came with her sure are.”

“Russian or royalty?”

“Russian, at least. I don't know about royalty. Only one of them speaks English worth a damn. You should hear them speaking French, though. I already asked if they'd join me and Danneel for dinner tonight.”

Danneel had been born in New Orleans and grew up speaking English and French, and Jared and Jensen knew she'd be thrilled to find someone who spoke one of her mother tongues.

“Ask her to find out if Alona's really a princess,” Jared said.

Genevieve said she would, and could they please leave her alone, she had work to do.

They went to the theater to see if the group was rehearsing, but the building was locked, so they rode out to the mine to make sure everything was running smoothly. It was, for once. The foreman told them he hadn't had any problems for a couple of days, although some of the miners had heard mysterious noises at night, when the camp was otherwise quiet.

“What kinds of noises?” Jensen asked.

“Couple guys said it sounded like a woman crying,” the foreman said. “Couple other guys said it sounded like the wind, nights there wasn't a wind. Heard it myself last night, thought it was an animal. I never found anyone creeping around the mine wasn't supposed to be here, so I don't know what it was.”

“Should we investigate?” Jared asked.

The foreman shook his head. “Not until someone or something goes missing. Figured it couldn't hurt to mention, but I think the men are just antsy to get paid and get to town.”

So Jared and Jensen ambled back to Danneel's at a leisurely pace, riding in comfortable silence and thinking their own thoughts. When Jared was young, his mother had cheerfully scared him and his brother and sister with folktales from the British Isles where she was born - stories of the banshee, the sight of whom meant impending death, and the black dog, whose glowing red eyes likewise foretold someone's doom, and the shapeshifting kelpie, who could drag a person into a lake and drown them. He'd read everything by Edgar Allen Poe he could get his hands on. And now, as he and Jensen rode back to town, even though it was bright day, he managed to scare himself by remembering all the ghost stories he could and trying to map them to the mine foreman's report of the mysterious noise.

There were no rivers nearby, so the miners couldn't have heard a banshee, and Jared didn't think the black dog made noise – its red eyes warned you to its presence – but there could be ghosts in the hills, the ghosts of dead Apache or Mexican adventurers who were killed far from home, and who knew what kinds of creatures lived here, kept alive in the stories told by the men and women who'd inhabited this place for centuries?

Jensen didn't believe in any of this stuff and would just laugh at him, so Jared kept his mouth shut. But it was something to consider, at least for the length of time it took to get back to Pluto and go on with their day.

On Sunday Jensen got up early and shaved his face and combed his hair and brushed his one good suit and went to church. Jared went with him. Jared had never been much of a church-goer, but it was important to Jensen so it was important to him. That morning Danneel even showed up with some of her girls, all of them dressed in their Sunday best, and because her house was profitable and her girls had taste, their Sunday best was fine indeed. People whispered at the sight of whores in church, as if they had no right to be there, but they walked down the aisle with their heads high, and sat in a pew close to the front.

The minister nodded in their direction as he began his sermon, which was about the devil and temptation and the wages of sin. The girls did not seem particularly inclined to take his words to heart. Not a one of them believed their profession was sinful, and if a man chose to spend his time and money on them, that was his choice. They were opportunists, like so many other people in this country, merely providing a service to men who needed it. Danneel had merely found a market for their particular skills, and there was no shame in the way they made their living.

Now Jared watched the back of her head, and the backs of her girls' heads, as the minister told the congregation to resist temptation, and that everyone had good in his heart.

“Half the men here have something other than good in their hearts,” Jared whispered to Jensen, nodding in Danneel's direction. Jensen kicked his foot and told him to hush.

After church Danneel made a point to shake the minister's hand and thank him for a thought-provoking sermon, and then, because he wasn't the only one who could provoke, she invited him to her house for lunch.

The minister stammered and behind them in line, Jared snickered. Danneel and her girls sauntered off, the ribbons on their hats fluttering in the breeze and their skirts swishing over the dusty walk.

“It's good to see some honest men in church,” the minister said to Jensen, shaking his hand. Jared tried to keep a straight face. Jensen was at least as honest as any other gun for hire in the territory, and he'd never taken advantage of Danneel's – or any other – girls, but he took god's name in vain and gambled and sold his skills with a six-shooter to anyone who wanted to pay for them, and even though he was raised a believer and he went to church, he'd be sinning again tomorrow without shame.

Tonight, even, if going to see Alona's performance counted.

As for Jared, who assumed the minister included him in his assessment of the congregation, he'd never tell anyone how he really felt about Jensen, or what he really wanted. His desires were sinful – not just the fact of them, but the object as well. But to an outside observer he probably did look honest, because most of the time he tried to be honest. He certainly didn't cheat at cards.

Well, not at every game.

Sunday afternoons were busy at Danneel's, because the mine owner gave the miners and the foreman the day off when the mood struck him, and they'd come to town to spend whatever money was left after their Saturday sprees. The rules of Danneel's house stipulated that all the men walking in the door be freshly washed, combed, and dressed in their good clothes, so the bathhouse was doing a roaring business as miners tried to make themselves presentable.

Jared and Jensen stuck their heads inside the kitchen to see if Eddie could sneak them some lunch, but he was busy and waved them off. Instead they planted themselves at Kim's table and played a few hands of poker, killing time and trying to make some money, fully aware that they'd just been to church that morning, to atone for the very thing they were doing right now.

But they kept an eye on the room, as Danneel paid them to do, so they could claim they were working, and honest work was good in god's sight. They were looking after the girls, to make sure no harm came to them, and god would surely approve of that.

The girls appreciated it too. Jensen wasn't interested in their brand of appreciation, but every so often Jared took one of them up on it.

Danneel gave them an early dinner as partial payment for looking after her girls, but Jared had to buy his own drinks. He'd won some hands and didn't mind, but Jensen hadn't played well and was a little annoyed about it.

“You're just pissed that Chad keeps winning,” Jared commented, as they strolled over to the theater. He jingled the coins in his pocket, trying to make the noise extra loud to annoy Jensen further. Chad had been lording it over them that he was on a winning streak. Jensen pursed his lips and said nothing.

They paid for their tickets and sat on the aisle. Jared preferred to sit there so he could stretch his legs into the aisle and not feel cramped, even though the seats in the middle had a better view and people grumbled at having to climb over him. Chad sat behind him and Jensen, and Rich kicked at Jared's feet as he and Rob made their way towards the front. Even Danneel was there, surprising Jared by tapping him on the head with her fan.

“Who's looking after the girls?” Jensen asked her.

“Sam and Kim have it well under control,” she said. “I'm sitting in a box.” She pointed with her fan. There was already a gentleman sitting up there. He saw Danneel pointing and tipped his hat. “If there's an intermission, come say hi.”

“Who's she sitting with?” Jared whispered to Jensen, after Danneel had walked off to her seat. Jensen glanced up at the gentleman and shrugged.

“Someone with more money than us,” he said.

The theater was full, and as the red velvet curtains parted in front of the stage, Jared leaned back in his chair and prepared to be entertained. The show was a full program of dancing and singing. There was also some Shakespeare, for the sophisticates in the audience: a violent, bloody, and silent reenactment of parts of _Macbeth_ , costarring Sebastian, the slightly taller one of Alona's fellow actors, and a prolonged death scene from _Romeo and Juliet_ , with Anton, the other actor, enthusiastically portraying the dying Romeo. It did not escape Jared's notice that Alona's entourage was entirely made up of dark-haired men, leaving her as not only the only woman, but the only blonde. An audience made up of mostly men would always be drawn to the one pretty girl on stage, and her hair made her hard to miss.

There was a brief intermission, during which Jared and Jensen went up to the box seats to ask Danneel's opinion and hopefully meet her gentleman friend, but the gentleman in question had gone to get himself a drink and was nowhere to be found.

After the show Jared and Jensen tried to get backstage to meet Alona properly and tell her how much they liked it, but Misha the manager barred their way and asked them politely to come back tomorrow night, because she was tired.

“Tomorrow the show will be different,” he added. “You must come.”

So they did. The theater was just as full, and Jared noted that a couple of Danneel's girls were there, each with a nicely-dressed gentleman on her arm. He wondered idly what their company cost for an evening at the theater, and if the price included anything other than simple companionship.

During the intermission they went outside to say hello to Christian, who was taking the opportunity to get some air and have a cigarette in peace. They talked about the performances and whether or not Alona was really Russian royalty, and although Christian enjoyed the singing and the very funny segment from A _Midsummer Night's Dream_ , which had replaced the death scene from _Romeo and Juliet_ , he wasn't interested in Alona's background, real or imagined.

“You're boring,” Jared said.

“You're rude,” Jensen told him.

“You have this fantastic history,” Jared went on, ignoring Jensen. “I'd think you'd be interested in other people's.”

“You'd be wrong,” Christian said.

Jared's disappointment clearly showed on his face, because Christian patted him on the shoulder and told him to cheer up. Lots of people were speculating about Alona's past. Jared didn't need him to do it too.

“You can always make something up,” Christian added, and went back inside the theater.

Jared and Jensen got backstage after the show this time, where Ruthie, one of the girls, was waiting with her gentleman friend. All the gentleman wanted to do was tell Alona he'd seen a performance of _Macbeth_ in St Louis, and her Lady Macbeth was much better.

“Are you going to compare me to someone else, too?” she asked Jared and Jensen, smiling at them. She looked smaller off-stage, in a dressing gown and with her hair down, her face scrubbed clean of her stage makeup. The dressing room wasn't very big to begin with, but Alona's costumes and props, wigs and hats and trunks, made it feel small and cramped, especially with Jared and Jensen inside and Misha hovering just outside the door.

“You're a much better Juliet than our friend Rich,” Jensen commented, and she laughed.

“Am I prettier?”

“He wouldn't say so, but yes.”

“We came last night too,” Jared said. “Is every show going to be different?”

“I don't know,” she said. “As you can see, we certainly have enough costumes. We have a large repertoire, so we'll see.”

“What's New York like?”

“Cold. We were there in the winter. Bustling. Exciting.”

“What about Paris?” Jensen asked.

“Beautiful and cultured and sweeping away its own history. Paris is heaving with people, every one of them unutterably, unapologetically French. If you want to know about Paris you should ask Anton – he's spent the most time there.”

Jared could believe it, for no other reason than Anton had more of an accent than either Alona or Misha, and according to Danneel his French was very good. Sebastian had yet to say anything on stage in a language Jared could understand.

“What's St Petersburg like?” he asked, hoping that was the way to get her to confess either her royalty or her lie.

“Like Paris, beautiful and cultured. It wants to be sophisticated and civilized and European, but under its polished veneer, it's still Russian.” She grinned impishly. “You still want to know if I'm really a princess.”

“You're not going to tell us, are you,” Jensen said.

“No,” Alona said, grinning again. “Now if you don't mind, gentlemen, I'd like to get dressed. I'm glad you liked the show. Both nights.”

Misha let them out and they walked back to Danneel's for a drink.

“I told you she wasn't going to tell us,” Jensen said to Jared. It was a nice night, balmy and dry with a faint breeze. Men went from saloon to saloon or headed towards the miners' camp. Jared watched someone emerge from the general store and make his way down the street towards Danneel's closest competition, a saloon trying desperately to turn itself into a brothel by dint of hiring prettier girls to work the upstairs rooms. Jared didn't think any of the girls were as attractive as the ones at Danneel's house, and he knew for a fact that Danneel treated hers better. Her saloon was almost an afterthought, a place for men to kill some time before or after meeting with a lady, and not really an end in itself. It was half a parlor and not even entirely saloon, anyway.

It was only Jared and Jensen who regularly treated Danneel's place as more of a saloon than a brothel, but she paid them to keep an eye on the place. Everyone else, one way or another, had to pay for the privilege of taking up space in her house.

Eddie was cleaning up and getting ready for bed when Jared and Jensen arrived, much to Jared's disappointment.

“Do you need a snack?” Samantha asked him, noting his hangdog look when he slid down the bar to get himself a drink. Something about her tone of voice made him think of his mother, and he wondered, not for the first time, if she had a husband and children stashed somewhere.

Someday he'd have to ask her. It was a story he'd like to hear, if she wanted to tell it. He could easily invent a history, but hearing it from her mouth would be better.

“Can you make me something?” he asked.

“I'm sure Eddie is keeping something warm just in case. Stay here.” She patted his hand and disappeared.

While she was gone, three men and Rachel all wanted drinks, and Jared was about to go behind the bar himself and start pouring when Samantha reappeared. She carried a plate holding several slices of roast between two pieces of bread.

“Did you know,” she said, “the sandwich was invented by a nobleman who didn't want to stop playing cards long enough to eat dinner?”

“I do now,” Jared said. “Thanks. Put it on my tab.”

She just winked and asked one of the men waiting impatiently what he wanted.

Jared thought he heard the man mumble that he was going down the street next time, and chuckled. As if anywhere else in Pluto had girls as pretty and as nice as the ones here. As if the saloons down the street were any kind of competition.

It was a Monday night, so Jared wasn't expecting trouble from anyone, but two men got into an argument over Alaina, which she tried to smooth over by promising her time to both of them – not at the same time, of course, although maybe she should have suggested that. Then a rancher came to see Rachel, left apparently satisfied, and returned an hour later to accuse both her and the house of stealing from him. He went out on his ass after pulling his pistol on Kim, and when one of the men fighting over Alaina threw a punch at the other man, Jensen bounced him out as well. Samantha brought the victim a towel for his nose, which was bleeding all over his shirt, and Alaina sat with him for fifteen minutes, playing nurse for free.

Danneel wasn't happy about any of it. She herself told the man with the towel against his face that he wasn't welcome unless he could behave, and if he ever raised his voice in her house again she'd have him thrown out. He tried to blame the man who'd punched him, then he tried to blame Alaina, and when he failed to be contrite in any fashion, she told him to leave. Jared and Jensen stood behind her, both of them wearing their six-shooters and trying to loom, to help her make her point.

The man left. Alaina started to argue with Danneel, who interrupted to tell her they'd discuss it later, and in the meantime there were better-behaved men who would enjoy her company, and who deserved it more.

“Is there a full moon?” Danneel sighed later, tallying up the evening's security expenses. “What's wrong with people?”

Jared opened his mouth but Jensen elbowed him in the ribs and said “Don't start howling.” Jared's teeth clacked together as he closed his mouth.

There was indeed a full moon, and Jared indulged himself by howling at it as he and Jensen walked home. Somewhere a dog started to bark, and Jensen laughed. Jensen had a great laugh, and Jared couldn't help but join in.

Life in Pluto wasn't always easy but it also wasn't generally life-threateningly dangerous. At least it wasn't until a couple of days later, when the sheriff appeared at Danneel's looking for Jared and Jensen, to ask them to take a job for him on behalf of the mine's owner. A crate of mining equipment was being held up in Albuquerque, and the sheriff suspected that representatives of law and order might have a quicker time retrieving it than a besuited representative from the mine.

Rob and Rich were in the brothel as well, Rob to see Rachel and Rich to play some poker and kill time until Rob was done, so Sheriff Morgan included them in his offer.

“They should get you a horse and cart to bring the equipment back here,” he said, “otherwise you have Mr Sheppard's permission to buy them. He'll reimburse you.”

“Do we get badges?” Rich asked.

The sheriff sighed. “Yes, you get badges. Temporary ones. You're there for one thing, so don't stay once you've found the crate. Mr Sheppard isn't paying you to goof off.”

Jared stifled a snicker. He and Jensen were more than capable of sticking to the plan and not wasting any time, but the chances of Rich finding an expensive distraction were pretty good.

“Why aren't you going?” Rob asked.

“Why isn't Mr Sheppard?” Jensen added. “You'd think the man who actually paid for the equipment would be the best person to retrieve it. You think whoever's holding it is going to look at us and just turn it over?”

“He asked me to do it,” the sheriff said. He looked less than pleased. Jared and Jensen had never had much of a problem with Mr Sheppard or the mine foreman, and when their services were required for peacekeeping they'd been paid promptly. But being the duly appointed sheriff meant that people felt they could ask anything of you at any time, and for all Jared knew, the mine owner thought Sheriff Morgan had more power outside Pluto than he really did.

Not that Jared or Jensen or Rob or Rich had that much themselves. But there were four of them and only one sheriff, and why shouldn't they take the opportunity to make a little extra money? How hard could it be, anyway?

So the four of them were sworn in as deputies for as long as it would take to ride to Albuquerque, get the crate of equipment, and escort it back. The sheriff had a couple of letters from Mr Sheppard, explaining his right to have his stuff, as well as a copy of the bill of sale for the equipment. Rob slipped them in his pack, Jared apologized to Danneel for not being around to watch out for her girls, Jensen asked Christian to keep an eye on the place, and they all loaded up their horses and headed out.

Albuquerque was a few days' ride and the weather held the first day. They made camp around sunset, built a fire, made dinner. Jensen rolled cigarettes for himself and Rob. Jared passed around the flask he'd gotten Samantha to fill before they left. When it was full dark they told ghost stories, Jared repeating some of his favorite Edgar Allen Poe stories and then letting Rich share a tale he knew.

Rich was winding down when Jensen held out a hand and told him to be quiet. Rich ignored him.

“Shut up,” Jensen hissed, and now Rich looked offended.

“What?” Jared asked.

Jensen just held his hand up, indicating they should all shut their traps.

“Don't you hear something?” he asked. “It sounds like a woman crying for help.”

Rob and Rich exchanged glances. Jared looked around. It was a cloudless night and the moon was just past full, but the flickering fire cast interesting shadows and it was difficult to see clearly beyond it.

“Who'd be out here all by herself?” Rob asked. “You sure you're not hearing things?”

“My story was very scary,” Rich said.

“Maybe it's a lost Indian girl?” Jared suggested.

“All alone? Then she'd be a trap.”

“Shut up, all of you,” Jensen snapped. He cocked his head, then stood. “Sounds like it's coming from over there. I'm going to look.” He pulled a branch out of the fire, held it up, and headed off. Jared and Rob and Rich watched him climb over some boulders and vanish from sight.

“You hear anything?” Rich asked the other two. Rob shook his head. Jared tried to listen, but all he could hear were pebbles sliding as Jensen climbed around. He remembered what the mine foreman had told them a week ago, about the miners hearing sounds at night, mysterious noises that could have been people crying or wind passing through the trees, nights when there wasn't any wind to be felt.

“Shit,” he muttered to himself, getting to his feet. They'd brought a couple of lanterns, so he lit one and went off in the direction Jensen had gone. If there really was a girl stuck back there, she might be hurt, and she might need two people to help her. Jensen was strong enough and he was carrying a makeshift torch, but it would be easier if he had someone else to light the way.

“Jensen?” Jared called. “Where are you? Did you find anyone?”

He thought he could hear someone or something moving around, but the wind could carry sound over miles, if there was nothing in its way, and even here, among the hills and rocks and scrub, there was no telling how near or far any given noise really was.

Jared made his way over rocks and across uneven ground, searching for Jensen and this potentially lost girl, but found nothing. He couldn't even see where Jensen's light had gone. He could hear someone, probably Rich, cry “For the love of god, Montresor!” followed by cackling and Rob yelling at him to shut up. But when Jared got back to the camp, Jensen was still missing.

He and Rob and Rich looked for several hours, as quietly as possible in case Jensen called out or his mysterious noise returned. Jared wished he'd picked someone other than Poe for his fireside stories. He could have shared so many different Greek myths – not scary, true, but entertaining all the same – but now, instead of thinking about the foibles of gods and the adventures of heroes, he was thinking about men being walled up alive. His heart pounded with anxiety as he tried not to contemplate what might have happened to Jensen.

It was as if Jensen had vanished off the face of the earth. Aside from some disturbed pebbles and dirt near their camp, where they'd seen Jensen walk off in search of the noise, there was no sign that he'd ever even been there. He hadn't dropped the branch he'd taken out of the fire. He hadn't shot off his pistols. He'd just disappeared, as in one of Jared's stories, into thin air.

Rob and Rich continued on to Albuquerque and Jared took Jensen's horse and headed back to town to gather a search party. He was starting to worry, even though Jensen was used to the trackless west, he was a careful climber, he was still wearing both his six-shooters, and he could take care of himself if he was lost for a day or so. It didn't help that after two days of searching, no one had found any indication of what might have happened. The search party returned to Pluto. Jared kept looking.

What if Jensen had fallen into a hole? What if he'd broken his ankle, or his leg? What if he'd been carried off by native warriors? What if he'd been set upon by wolves, and couldn't shoot them fast enough to save himself?

But he was only one man, and not a very important man at that. He wasn't the sheriff or the minister or Mr Sheppard. Pluto didn't have the resources or the inclination to send its people out into the wilderness to look for him for very long. Either Jensen had gotten lost and he'd make his way home eventually, or he was wounded or dead, and in that case there was nothing to do but either conduct a half-hearted search for the body or wait for someone else to find it and bring what was left back to town.

Jared couldn't accept any of that. Jensen was still alive. He could be hurt, or lost, or he could have been taken captive, or he could have fallen down a tunnel or into a cave. And wherever he was, whatever had happened to him, Jared had to find him.

Jared's mind ran away with itself, conjuring all kinds of scenarios. He had his own experiences in Texas and the New Mexico Territory to draw from, the experiences of the men and women in Pluto, the stories he'd read, the stories he'd heard. Jensen could be in danger. He could be dead.

He couldn't be dead. He wasn't dead. Jared refused to entertain the possibility.

The only other person who seemed as dedicated to finding Jensen was Christian, who'd led the search party and had stayed out when everyone else went back to town. Jared went to talk to him, to ask him to search among the remaining Navajo or Apache or any other tribes he could find, to ask if they knew anything, if they'd seen Jensen or helped him or hurt him. Christian wasn't even in town for a day before he packed up and went out again. He went west, as far as Jared could tell, or north, to search among the land's original inhabitants, the people among whom he still seemed to be most comfortable.

Jared had always liked him – Christian was a good guy in his own way, and the stories he was willing to tell about his years among the Indians were fascinating – but there was something unsettled about him, something wild and untamed like the warriors who had captured him when he was ten, who had taught him and raised him as their own. He wore a civilized skin most of the time and had more or less settled in Pluto like any other white man, and he may have been part of a good Protestant family for the first ten years of his life, but he'd grown to manhood among the Apache, and that part of his life was never far from the surface.

He was the perfect person to look for Jensen. He knew the land, he knew the people who still roamed it, he was dedicated, and he wasn't afraid.

But neither was Jared. The thought of losing Jensen forever was much more terrifying than anything that might be waiting for him out in the desert. He just had to figure out where Jensen might be, where he might have gone or where he might have been taken, and go that way.

He had no basis on which to judge. Jensen wouldn't have gone back to Dallas, where he'd been born and where his family still was, and he wouldn't have voluntarily left Pluto without Jared, but as to specifics about where he might have gone, Jared had no clue. So he asked around for advice. He called on Alona, because she'd seen more of the country than either he or Jensen had, and she was full of stories, which meant she was full of ideas and unintentional suggestions.

“There's a story my nana used to tell me,” she told Jared. “About a girl trapped in a mountain cave in Siberia, in the northern part of Russia. She was cursed to guard the Old Ones' treasure. You could hear her moaning, and if she caught you on her mountain, she'd take you down into her cave and no one would ever see you again. You could only break the curse and free her - and save yourself - if you could guess her real name.”

“What was it?” Jared asked. “What was her name?”

“No one knows. There's no end to that story. I never heard of a prince who would come and give her name back to her, who could lift the curse and rescue her.” Alona stirred her tea. “Nana used it as a cautionary tale – 'Stay away from the mountain or cursed girl will get you'. It used to scare my brother when we were little.”

Was that what had taken Jensen? Jared didn't know why a girl from the northern end of Russia would travel through her country to get to his – and he knew how big Russia was, he'd seen the globe in Genevieve's office in the back of the hotel – or why she'd take up residence in the desolate desert territories when her home was so cold and full of snow, or where she'd find a mountain to inhabit, but the land was riddled with caves and mines and who knew, maybe this Siberian girl had come to Pluto.

Had there been any Russians passing through, before Alona and her entourage? Jared tried to think. If Jensen had been taken, this girl might have snatched someone else, in the search for her real name. Had any boys gone missing recently?

There was that little boy from the wagon train who vanished in the snowstorm last fall. No one had even found his bones.

“Could that be it?” Alona asked, interrupting his thoughts. “Do the Indians have legends like that?”

“Did you hear about any missing boys, when you were doing shows in other towns?” Jared asked in response.

“Not that I remember. Why?”

“Maybe she took someone before she took Jensen.”

“Only if he crossed a mountain and trespassed on her land.”

_We weren't trespassing_ , Jared thought. _We were just passing through. People do it all the time._

And Jensen had definitely heard something, because he'd gone to investigate.

Would she even be Russian, this cursed girl hiding in a cave, if she was all the way out here? Would she be Apache? Pueblo? Navajo? He could ask Eddie or Christian, or he could if Christian hadn't already left on his own search, but Alona wouldn't know.

Maybe Danneel would, or one of her girls. Sometimes men were chatty with girls in private in a way they weren't in public. Maybe Genevieve had heard something from one of the hotel's guests. Jared could ask.

But none of them could help. Genevieve thought he was losing his mind. Alaina laughed at him outright. Samantha just sighed and patted his hand, as if she were his mother and he were being silly. Danneel told him to be careful.

“My girls talk,” she said, “you know that. Gossips, the whole house of them. If any of them had heard anything about Jensen, you'd know by now. But they're starting to think you've lost your mind.” She took his hand. “I know you miss him. I know you love him. But if you lose your head you'll never find him.”

“But that's what Alona told me,” Jared said, “that he could have been taken by a girl in a mountain, and if I knew her real name - “

“Alona's an actress. She's not even really Russian. You can't believe anything she tells you.”

“He's out there, somewhere. I have to find him. If he's in some abandoned mine somewhere, if he's some girl's prisoner, I have to get him. If he's in hell - “

“You'll end up there with him.”

_But at least we'll be together_ , he thought.

_You're talking like a crazy person_ , Jensen said in his head. _Danny's right._

_But I have to find you._

He couldn't ask Eddie about this girl, Jared realized. Eddie would tell him the desert had taken Jensen for her own, as tribute for Jared, Rob, and Rich traveling across the land. It could explain how Jensen had vanished without a trace, as if the earth had opened up beneath his feet and swallowed him whole. But how did you rescue someone from the desert? Jared believed in ghosts and banshees and the dangers of making deals at a crossroads, but he wasn't sure he believed in the evil personification of the land on which he lived. The minister would just say the devil took him, and Jared didn't believe in the devil either.

But Jensen did.

Maybe that was how this worked. It didn't matter what Jared believed. The only thing that mattered was Jensen's faith. Jensen would just laugh if he knew Eddie was saying the desert snatched him away, but he would understand the minister's opinion that it was the devil's doing.

And there was still Alona's story. What if there was truth in it? What if there was someone out there, taking unwary travelers down into a hidden cave? Jared needed to be prepared. But he didn't know how to fight this Siberian girl. The best he could do was make a list of likely names, just in case.

Chad dragged him to the undertaker's as a joke, to be fitted for a coffin.

“If you get lost in the desert,” the undertaker said, “you won't need a coffin. The vultures and the coyotes will pick you clean.”

The undertaker, Mr Richings, looked like a walking cadaver, which was appropriate, and he was very serious, which was also appropriate. Rumor said he'd been an actor and a singer and a dancer before he came to Pluto. Jared liked that story, weird as it was, and it made him like the undertaker more.

“Hm,” Mr Richings said now, stretching a tape measure across Jared's shoulders. “Hmm.”

“I won't need it,” Jared said. “I'm going to find Jensen and bring him back.”

Neither Chad nor the undertaker had a response for that, and even if they did, Jared wouldn't have listened.

* * *

_The devil left no clues as to where he and his captive had gone. All the residents of the town turned out to look, but the devil was crafty and his hiding-places were many, and his departure was swift and silent. The younger, taller man was distraught. He had lost his best friend, his near-brother, and there were no clues left behind._

_He saddled his horse and rode east._

* * *

Jared set out with his rifle and his six-shooters and a tiny gold crucifix on a chain, which he borrowed from Brianna on condition that he return it intact. He had bullets and full canteens and saddlebags packed with provisions. He had Jensen's tobacco pouch and half-empty pack of rolling papers. He had his compass. He had a flask of holy water and a little bag of salt and an iron nail. He didn't have the girl's name, if Jensen had indeed been taken by the cursed girl from Alona's story, and he didn't have a bible, in case Jensen had been taken by the devil. But he had his own desperation, and his own desire, and his own love. And he would find Jensen or die trying.

The farther he traveled, the fewer caves and mines there were, the more Jared thought about Jensen and the more he became convinced that Alona was wrong, that Jensen hadn't been taken by a Russian girl cursed to guard a treasure, who would take you down into her cave forever if she caught you on her mountain. This wasn't a country made for girls from cold and snowy parts of the world. As much as Jared loved it – and he did love it – this was the devil's country, dry and unwelcoming and unforgiving.

And the devil had taken Jensen.

But Jared was going to go to hell and bring him back.

That was so easy to say, he discovered, but not so easy to accomplish. He knew his sister-in-law thought anything west of San Antonio was hell, the hot desert and what was left of the Tonkawa and Apache and Comanche, Mexicans and wild men and sinners and lunatics. She'd married into a family of restless wanderers, the lot of them always heading west, but she'd planted her stake and was going to stay.

The New Mexico Territory was a vast place. Even Texas, official state that it was, was boundless and trackless and immense, even with the railroad, even with the slowly growing towns and cities and the mapping influence of settlers and government men. And if the entire country west of his birthplace was hell, if the devil could be anywhere, where would he even look?

According to the minister, hell was fire and brimstone, but Jared had read too much to believe it was the same for everyone. Sisyphus had to push a boulder up a hill for eternity. Tantalus was condemned to have a rushing river and vines laden with grapes just out of his reach. Midas's own daughter turned to gold when he touched her. Dante's heretics were trapped in burning tombs, but the gluttonous were stuck in disgusting mud and freezing rain.

And Jared was wandering across scrubland and desert, looking for his best friend.

He followed the sunrise, thinking that Eden was supposed to be in the east, that Adam and Eve, once banished from the Garden, had gone west. Paradise was east, and Jensen wasn't in Paradise, but the snake had been there too, to tempt Eve into eating the apple, and if the snake – if Satan – was in Eden, could he still be there? Could hell be nearby?

Jared shook his head. He wasn't even a religious man, never mind a biblical scholar. He was following his own crazy. He needed Jensen for this.

He tried to think rationally, or as rationally as a man could when he was convinced the devil had taken the person he loved most. Cain had gone west, after killing his brother. He'd absented himself from god. Had he traveled to the land of the devil? Where else would the world's first fratricide go, but to hell? Not literally, not while he lived, but it was a metaphor, wasn't it? He was in a kind of mental hell from having killed his brother and left the presence of his god.

But Jared couldn't work with metaphors, not out here. The desert was too concrete, too real. And he couldn't reduce Jensen down to the mere object of his quest, the mental goal for his internal search.

All the same, he needed a direction, and east seemed as good a one as any. So he kept going that way, towards the sunrise, towards civilization, towards the places his parents and grandparents had come from, and away from the spot where Jensen and vanished.

There were canyons out here, cliff faces, hills. Places where the devil might hide. There were streams so he could refill his canteens and so his horse could drink, and there was the occasional jackrabbit or small scuttling creature he could trap and skin for dinner. It wasn't winter yet. He wasn't going to freeze at night, and he knew enough to keep himself and his horse from dying of thirst, and in the end, he had his desperate need to find Jensen to keep himself alive.

It was a lonely ride, and every so often the thought that he was going to get lost out here would intrude. His compass kept him going in the right direction, and he made note of bodies of water and other landmarks, but the land was big and he was small, and there was a lot of ground to cover. He could head straight into the sunrise until he came to the Mississippi, and then he could turn north or south and come back, turn around and go back, turn around and go back, crisscrossing Texas and the New Mexico Territory until years had passed and he was no closer to getting Jensen back.

He couldn't think about that. He couldn't think about the many ways in which he could fail. He could only think about the many ways that would take him to success.

Jared talked to himself, to his horse, to Jensen, wherever he was. He tried to sing, but he couldn't carry a tune in a bucket and had to stop, embarrassed. There was no one and nothing to hear him and he was so used to Jensen's singing that his own voice sounded wrong even to him.

At night he would stake his horse, make a little fire, eat something, roll himself in his blanket, and stare at the sky. He'd never been much of a praying man and wasn't going to start now – it seemed hypocritical to only talk to god when you needed something – so he would talk to Jensen, or tell his horse stories, or reassure him that it shouldn't be much longer, they'd find Jensen soon and go home.

One night he wandered away from where he'd laid his camp, looking for animal tracks and a potential dinner, when he was stopped by a noise. He knew the noises of the world. He'd fallen asleep to the sounds of the wind in the brush or the calls of birds or animals. There was little silence to be had in Pluto, except in the gray early hours of the morning, before people were up but after everyone had gone to bed, and even then, there was always a chicken to make noise, or a dog or a horse, or the creaking of the boarding house as it settled on its foundation, or sometimes Jensen snoring.

This was something Jared hadn't heard since he'd started on his search. This was the sound of a herd running wild.

He paused, listening, ear cocked to a noise that sounded like hundreds of horses pounding across the desert. He'd be trampled if he didn't get out of their way, but he couldn't tell where they were coming from, and he didn't know in which direction to move.

And then they came into view, an entire herd of horses resolving on the horizon. As they came closer, he noticed two things through his surprise – they were mottled, like the Comanche's painted ponies, and they didn't hit the earth as they ran.

That many horses, so many he couldn't count them, should have caused a tremendous shaking of the ground under their hooves.

They surrounded him, manes and tails streaming in a non-existent wind, making a thundering noise but passing over the land like nothing, not touching him and not even noticing him as they ran. They weren't alive. They couldn't be real.

But they were solid, as he realized when he reached out in curiosity and grabbed one, yanking on its mane as he hauled himself onto its back. He hung on with his knees, his hands knotted in its mane, as it galloped across the scrubland. Some part of him knew he shouldn't have been able to do that. You couldn't touch a ghost. But the larger part of him knew, suddenly and unconsciously - _They'll take me to the underworld. They'll take me to hell._ And most importantly, _They'll take me to Jensen._

They ran across the plain, the herd of ghost ponies with Jared clinging to one in their midst, streaming past scrubby trees and open land, across the rim of a canyon until they swerved at some unknown signal and went down. Jared wouldn't have known there was a track cut into the canyon wall there. The floor of the canyon rushed at him and he didn't feel it at all as his pony leaped off the track and landed on the flat ground.

It was full dark now. Jared could see by the light of the moon, but the land stretched away in front of him and stretched up behind him, and all he could do was twist his hands in the pony's mane and tighten his knees against its flanks and hope it stopped so he could get off.

But it vanished, as suddenly as it had appeared, the whole herd of horses fading into nothing, the sound of their passing growing fainter and fainter until Jared was standing on the floor of the canyon, near a cliff face, all alone.

He couldn't even say how he hadn't fallen off, how the pony had just faded under him and left him there.

There was a crack in the wall behind him. It wasn't quite a cave entrance, but it was an opening.

He was right – the ghost ponies had brought him to the devil's front door.

_I'm coming_ , he thought, and squeezed his way inside.

It was dark in the passage, and he wished he had a lantern. He'd brought one with him from Pluto, intending to use it to light his way once he found the devil's house, but of course it was back at his camp, with his horse and all his provisions and his rifle. He was still wearing his six-shooters, and they were both loaded, but what good was a bullet against the devil? He'd need holy water, and that was back at his camp too.

He'd figure it out later. He started walking.

The passage was dark but the wall was close enough for Jared to use for guidance, so as not to trip and fall. He walked and walked, knowing that he was going in the right direction only because there was no other way to go. It was silent as he walked deeper into the side of the cliff, the silence that came with being the only living creature around, the silence that came with being alone underground.

He could tell that he was walking downslope, and he could tell that the path was clear. How easy it was to walk into hell.

He laughed. The minister back in Pluto might use this metaphor in one of his sermons – the path to hell, good intentions – but it was literal here.

He couldn't tell how long he'd been walking when he suddenly came out of the corridor into a cave. It was brighter there, the walls and ceiling phosphorescing with enough light to see by. On the other side of the cave were a couple of exits out. He picked one at random and was walking towards it when he realized he wasn't alone.

Jensen.

He spun around, but it wasn't Jensen. It was a woman – or at least Jared assumed the person was female – small and bony, wearing something shapeless and colorless that might have once been a dress, face half-hidden by a fall of white hair.

“Who are you?” she asked. Her voice was dry and brittle and deep for a woman's. She had an accent he didn't recognize. She sounded like the scrubland might sound, if it could talk. Eddie would no doubt recognize the voice, and tell Jared that the land itself had taken shape for him.

But it wasn't the land in human form. It was the devil. And she had Jensen.

“I've come for my friend,” Jared said.

“How did you come to my cave?” She walked up to him. The top of her head barely cleared his elbow. She pushed her hair back with both hands and tucked it behind her ears, a startlingly human gesture for a creature who seemed to be – equally startlingly – not human.

Her face was a wide skull with thin, gray-white skin pulled tight across it, her eyes black and round like a bird's. Jared involuntarily took a step back. He knew the devil could take any form, but this was not a shape he was familiar with. He'd expected something much more human, something dark and terrifying, maybe even a beast. Where were the horns, the tail?

The horns could be buried in her hair, the tail hidden under her dress. Her shape didn't matter. All that mattered was that she had Jensen, and Jared was going to get him back.

“The ghost ponies brought me,” he said. “I want - “ He couldn't make a deal. No one who made a deal with the devil ever came out on top.

But what choice did he have?

“You are not supposed to be here,” she said.

But he was. He found his voice. “I want Jensen back.”

She just stood there, looking at him. The air of the cave was cool and dry. The ground was flat rock under his feet, clean as if someone had swept it. Jared could smell his own sweat, his own nerves.

“I want him back,” he repeated.

“No,” she said.

“What do you mean, no? You can't keep him.”

“I took him. I do not understand him. He is mine to understand.”

_This isn't finders-keepers_ , Jared thought, but what he said was “What don't you understand? If I explain it, whatever you don't get, will you let him go?”

“It is not something you can explain. It is something I must know.”

“What?”

“He does not feel what other men feel, when they look at women. I know that desire well. I have tasted it many times over. I do not taste it in him. I must know why.”

_You don't drink, you don't fuck...._ Jared heard Brianna's words again in his head. As far as he knew, Jensen had never slept with any of Danneel's girls. He'd never slept with any girl. But he'd never been with a man either. It was something Jared knew about him, had always known – if subconsciously – Jensen wasn't interested in women the way they were interested in him.

The way Jared was sometimes interested in him. 

The devil cocked her head, black black eyes blinking at Jared like an inquisitive sparrow's.

“You love him,” she said. “I can taste it on you.”

“Of course I do.”

“He does not feel the same for you.”

But Jared knew that. He wanted Jensen the way men wanted Danneel's girls, and he loved him the way a man might love his brother. He knew Jensen only returned the second kind of love. He'd known it for a long time, and it didn't matter. Jensen was still Jared's best friend in all the world. He was the one person for whom Jared would ride off into nothingness, the one person he'd go to hell to try and save.

The devil licked her lips, another strangely human gesture, and put her it flat against Jared's chest. He felt a burning chill, like ice against his skin, through his clothes. He flinched. She looked up at him, expression flat, inhuman black eyes sharp and bright.

“You cannot have him,” she said. “He is mine to understand or not.”

“I'll trade for him.” 

“You have nothing I need.”

_She took my heat._

But Jared couldn't lose that.

“Take me instead,” he said.

Her fingers closed against his chest and he shivered, a full-body tremble that shook all his bones.

“You have nothing I need,” she repeated. “You love him as many men love.”

“Not as they love men. That's gotta be worth something.”

“It is the same love that men feel for women. I know it. I need more.”

Her fist against his shirt was like a ball of ice working its way through his chest. He could feel it cracking his ribs, slowly, like tree branches after an ice storm.

What did he have? What was Jensen worth?

Everything.

“Take me,” Jared begged. “Take my love. Take my – my life. Let him go.”

“I will suck it from you like marrow from a bone,” she said thoughtfully. Her expression, her tone of voice, never changed. “You will never leave my cave. You will never see him again.”

But Jensen would never forgive him for that. What good would it do to save Jensen's life if he'd be alone the rest of his years? Some things, however romantic, were unforgivable. He'd never leave Jared, and Jared could never leave him.

But there had to be a way.

He was wrong. This wasn't the devil from the minister's sermons, to be defeated with prayers and faith. Jared had stumbled into a cracked version of the fairyland from the tales his mother had heard as a little girl, where lost travelers were cautioned against eating the food or drinking the wine or making any deals with the fairy queen, as they wandered a place where they could be lost forever.

This was a dark world he had no idea how to navigate, ruled by a woman from no story he'd ever heard.

She offered him nothing, so he would offer nothing back.

“You said he doesn't love me,” Jared told the devil, “not the way I love him. Take that – that, that lack – and let him go.”

“How strange,” she mused, “to offer something belonging to someone else, in order to save his life. This nothing is the thing I do not understand. I must keep him, so that I might.”

Jared wasn't Orpheus, to offer a song to sway the lord of the dead into letting Jensen go. He wasn't Scheherazade, to tell the king a story with no ending every night as a way to prevent Jensen's death. He wasn't Persephone, to trade six months of his life underground so Jensen could have six months under the sun. He wasn't Janet of Carterhaugh, to pull Jensen from his horse and hold him as he changed shape again and again, to free him from the clutches of the fairy queen.

Jared was a gun for hire, like many men in this part of the country. He had nothing. He was no one.

No. He was Jensen's brother, Jensen's partner, Jensen's friend. He had grabbed hold of the ghost of a Comanche pony and ridden it into the underworld to find Jensen and bring him home. And he stood in the middle of hell in front of this tiny woman with her white hair and her black eyes and her fist like a ball of ice, and he was not leaving unless Jensen came with him.

She tilted her head to the other side.

“Interesting,” she said. Her tongue flicked out, like a snake's. “You have many stories inside you. Other men's stories. You will share them.”

“In exchange for Jensen?”

Was this the deal? He'd stay and be her personal storyteller, and Jensen would get to live?

But how could he let Jensen walk out of here without him?

“One story,” he said. “And you'll let us both go.”

Her expression didn't change but Jared got the distinct impression that she was laughing at him.

“No,” she said.

“No?”

“One will not satisfy my curiosity. You must tell me all of them.”

All of them? Every fairytale his mother had ever told him, every folktale, every myth, every tall tale he'd ever heard or shared around a campfire, every play he'd ever seen, every book he'd ever read.

“I'll be here forever,” he said in disbelief.

“You wished to trade.”

“Not for that.” _I can't stay here while Jensen's free out there. I can't leave him alone like that._ “I can, um, I can tell you one now and come back later, and you'll let Jensen go.”

Her black black eyes stared at him, unblinking. He realized her fist against his chest wasn't a ball of ice anymore. He could feel his skin and his bones and his blood racing through his body.

“I'm not leaving here without him,” Jared said, just to be sure she knew what his terms were.

She said nothing. He could hear his own tense breathing, hear his heart thudding behind his ribs, but she was still and silent and the world around them felt empty and dead.

Was Jensen dead too, and this was all a trick? Was the devil planning to keep them both, forever separated from each other? Had he ridden into hell after all?

“I can't leave him here,” Jared said, to himself as much as to her. “I can't.”

The devil flattened her hand against his shirt. She looked away from his face, eyes flicking down to her palm pressed to his chest. She tilted her head as if she were thinking.

He was struck by how small she was, what a tiny woman she must have been if she had ever been human, and how much power she held over him. He was trapped here. There were no herds of ghost ponies to carry him back home. There was no way for him to know the way out, no way for him to determine which of the openings leading from the cave would take him to the path he'd walked to get here. He could have left breadcrumbs like Hansel and Gretel, or a red thread like Theseus in the Labyrinth, and he still wouldn't be able to follow them back the way he'd come.

This creature, who was not the queen of the fairies or the devil in hell or the girl in the mountain from Alona's story, had the upper hand because she was playing a game he had no idea how to win. She was playing a game in which only she knew the rules. But even in town, up in the real world, in even the shadiest saloon, the house didn't always win.

What had she said? _You have many stories inside you._

Jared had an idea. No one got the better of the devil, but he was going to try. Maybe he was Scheherazade after all.

“I'll make you a deal,” he said. “Let me and Jensen leave, and I'll tell you all the stories I know. But not all at once.”

She looked up at him.

“I'll tell you one now,” he went on, hoping he had an advantage to press. “So you know I mean it. And then you'll bring Jensen here so I know he's still alive, and you'll let us go home.”

“What will you share with me?”

“The first story in _The Thousand and One Nights_.”

The devil pulled her hand away from his chest. She didn't move, and for all her slight size Jared felt crowded. He tried to mentally put more space between them as he told her about Scheherazade and the king of Persia, and how the king would marry a virgin each day and behead her that night before she could be unfaithful. He told the devil how Scheherazade conspired to spend the night with the king and tell him a tale without an ending, and how the king came to her every night after that to find out how the previous night's story ended, and how she kept telling him stories but stopping before she finished them, and how the king keeping her alive to hear her tales prevented him from marrying and beheading any more girls.

“After a thousand and one stories, she was done,” Jared finished. “She didn't have any more to tell. But the king had fallen in love with her and married her.”

“Is that the end?” the devil asked.

“That's just the introduction. There are still all the stories Scheherazade told the king.”

“Tell me another.”

“I said one.”

“There is time yet. Tell me another and I will let you go.”

Jared could take out his pocket watch but he knew it wouldn't give him the correct time. He had no choice but to trust her.

So he told the devil the story of the Minotaur and the Labyrinth, and how Ariadne helped Theseus find his way through the maze and he repaid her by abandoning her on a beach.

Maybe that wasn't the best one he could have shared.

“But the god Dionysus heard her crying for her husband, and took pity on her and married her,” he said. “The end. Now let me and Jensen go.”

The devil stretched up to put her hand at the base of Jared's throat, where his shirt collar was open. Her palm was dry and cool.

“You will come to me on this day each year,” she said. “You will tell me stories for the length of time between sunset and sunset. I will taste them on you and remember what it was like to be human.”

“Deal.”

“And you will bring your Jensen. He will stay with me from that sunset to the next, so I might try to understand him.”

“Once a year.”

“Once a year.”

“And you won't take anyone else.”

She tilted her head, as if she didn't understand. “But I must eat. I must live.”

He blinked at her. What did that mean? Was she going to _eat_ Jensen?

“Uh,” he said stupidly. “What do you mean?”

“I must eat.” She took his hand and licked his palm. He yanked his arm away, startled and disgusted, and wiped his palm against his thigh. “You have many years yet. I can taste them on your skin. You would sustain me.”

This was not a line of discussion he was prepared for.

“Did you want to eat Jensen?”

“I cannot eat his emptiness. A man has passion, sometimes. A strong hatred, a great love, a need for revenge. This I can take, to remind me what it is like to be human. But a man's years, what he has not yet lived, those will keep me alive.” She tilted her head, seeming to study him. Jared stepped back, away from her probing regard.

He was so close. So close to getting Jensen back, to saving both of them. He could not lose now.

“You promised me I could have Jensen back,” he said. “You'd let us both go, and we'll come back in a year so I can tell you stories for a day and you can study him for a day. That's it. That's what you promised.”

How did you seal a deal with the devil? Did you spit? Shake hands? Cut your skin and bleed on the ground?

Faust signed a contract in his own blood. But Jared hadn't signed anything.

“You may take him,” the devil said. She stretched out her hand until her fingers nearly touched Jared's chest. “You will return in a year so that I might listen to you for a day and a night, and study him for a day and a night. Then you will leave, so you might return again. As long as you live, you will come to me on this day each year. That is our deal.”

“Agreed.” He was afraid to mention the eating again. He didn't want to have to renegotiate and risk losing the one thing he wanted. “Now bring him back.”

“He will follow you.” She pointed to an entrance across the cave from the one by which Jared had entered.

She'd tasted his future on him, the years he had yet to live.

He suddenly remembered the little boy from the wagon train who'd vanished in a snowstorm, how half the town of Pluto had turned out to search for him, how they never even found his body.

He left.

This passage was just as dark as the one he'd taken to get to the devil. The air was cool and dry. Once again Jared wished he had a lantern, or at least a match. He could feel the passage sloping upwards, just as the other had sloped down, so he could at least guess he was going in the right direction, towards the surface rather than deeper underground.

Orpheus hadn't trusted Hades, and looked back to make sure Eurydice was really following him. He lost her for good, because no one breaks a deal with the devil, and no one gets to negotiate twice. Jared wasn't going to make that mistake.

But he couldn't hear anything behind him – not footsteps, not breathing, not the clink of Jensen's spurs or the _shf shf_ sound his coat sometimes made. And how did Jared know the devil had kept her side of the bargain? She said she had, but she'd also said she kept Jensen because she couldn't understand him, and how was she to know for sure Jared would bring him back every year so she could try to figure him out? What was one day a year, for however long Jared and Jensen stayed in Pluto, compared to a lifetime of having him as her prisoner?

For all she knew, they'd be gone in a year, following the railroad or just their own desires. The mine could play out, Pluto could fade, everyone could leave. If Danneel upped stakes and moved her brothel and her girls farther west, or even north, Jared was sure he and Jensen would follow. Pretty girls in their line of work would always need someone to protect them, to throw rowdy clients into the street or menace them into behaving.

And what happened then? What would the devil do, if Jared and Jensen moved on? Would she follow them? Would she take Jensen back from wherever they were? Would Jared be able to find him again?

_You better be behind me_ , Jared thought. _If she tricked me, or she sent a changeling in your place, I'm coming back here with dynamite and blowing her off the face of the earth._

_That's pretty extreme_ , Jensen said in his head, and Jared had no response to that, even in his own mind, that was anything other than _Well, I love you that much, and I can't live without you._ And he could never say that to Jensen in person. But he didn't have to.

No one chased down the devil, and rode a ghost pony into the underworld, unless it was for love.

The path went on and on, up and down hills and around corners and through narrow passageways and occasionally caverns. He couldn't see more than a few feet in front of him and he was too afraid to look behind. He had no idea how long he'd been walking or how much farther he had to go. He couldn't tell how far he was underground, if he even was underground at all, or if there was anything else in the caverns and passages with him. All he knew was that it wasn't the path he'd taken on his way in. It curved too much and passed through too many open spaces and was too uneven an incline.

He still couldn't hear anything behind him.

He started to hum, to let Jensen know he was still there, in case Jensen couldn't see anything either, but the sound was so eerie in the echoing quiet that he stopped. His humming bounced off unseen walls and ceilings until it sounded like two Jareds, or three, and he could imagine his own doppelgangers trailing him, sent by the devil for her own incomprehensible reasons.

He was half-hoping his off-key humming would elicit a sarcastic comment from Jensen, an affectionate joke, anything. But there was silence. And so Jared kept walking.

He wasn't tired, and he realized that for all the time he could have spent in the underworld, he wasn't hungry or thirsty either.

His canteen and all his provisions were still with his horse, wherever that was. Jared hadn't been carrying anything except his six-shooters when he grabbed that pony and rode it to the devil's front door. He didn't know how to get back there, or even where “there” was, once he and Jensen emerged into the sunlight again.

He was assuming there would be sunlight, and the devil hadn't kept him until nightfall. Time was unpredictable in the underworld. Persephone was six months in the land of the dead, so she could follow that with six months in the land of the living. But Rip Van Winkle had fallen asleep for one night after meeting the men playing ninepins and had gone home to find decades had passed, and Oisin returned from Tir na nOg after three centuries, assuming it had only been a few years and that he could still visit with his family and friends.

Jared didn't want to repeat any of those stories. He didn't want to be any of those people. He wanted to go home to Pluto, with Jensen next to him, and resume his life.

And in a year he'd have to find his way back here with Jensen next to him, and give up two days of their lives so he could tell the devil stories and Jensen could submit to her studies. It wasn't a bad bargain. He could have done much worse. But that was assuming the devil had held up her end. He had to trust her. He didn't have any other choice.

“I hope you're still back there,” he said. “Alona told me the devil was some Russian girl, and if I knew her name and gave it back to her, she'd let you go. But she was wrong. She was so wrong.”

His voice echoed around him, the way it might in any normal cave, but it didn't bounce off the rock like his humming had, and he could only hear himself.

“No one's advice was any help,” he went on. “I didn't even ask Eddie. He'd just tell me the land took you for her own, and I couldn't work with that.”

The land didn't take Jensen, the devil did. But she'd meant to keep him for herself. He'd have to tell Eddie that.

And Christian - 

Shit.

“Christian's looking for you,” Jared said. “He went one way, I went the other. He's never gonna find you, but we're never gonna find him to let him know you're okay. You are okay, aren't you?”

Nothing.

Jared would just have to keep hoping. Hoping and walking.

He pulled out his pocket watch, out of curiosity, and wasn't entirely surprised to note that it had stopped. Of course it did. There was no time down here. There was nothing except the devil and her inhuman face and her strange bargains.

And Jared, and Jensen.

Jared walked on.

And then it was lighter in the caves, light enough to see the rock on either side of him and the path twenty feet in front of him. He could dimly see the ceiling over his head. He realized it must have been getting lighter for a while, so slowly he hadn't noticed. He was getting closer to the end. He was getting closer to freedom.

And he was getting closer to seeing Jensen.

He walked faster. His boots crunched on loose stones and sand, enough noise to cover any sound of Jensen behind him. But he'd come this far assuming Jensen was still there, and this was when Orpheus fucked up, when he was close enough to see the way out of Hades' kingdom.

But Jared was smarter than that.

“We're almost there,” he said. “We're almost home.”

The light ahead was diffuse and indirect. Jared couldn't tell if he was heading for a cave mouth, for a doorway, for a mere crack in the rock face of a mountain. He couldn't tell if he was walking into sunset or sunrise, or where he would come out. He only knew there was light ahead, and it was growing.

He walked out of a cave, onto the stony rubble partway up a hill rather than the floor of a canyon. The sky looked like sunset. He wasn't sure what direction he was facing, but he couldn't actually see the sun, so he knew it wasn't west.

He blinked. And turned around.

Jensen was stumbling out of the mouth of the cave, squinting and blinking and looking vastly confused, but otherwise no different than he had the day he vanished.

“What the fuck,” he said.

Jared laughed, unable to help himself, and grabbed Jensen's face and kissed him. The devil had kept her bargain. She'd returned Jensen to him. Jared was never, ever, as long as he lived, ever letting Jensen out of his sight again.

When he finally pulled away, his hands still on either side of Jensen's face, his own face split by the biggest, craziest smile, Jensen was staring at him, stunned.

“What the fuck,” Jensen repeated. And then, trying to free himself from Jared's hold to look around them, he added “Where the hell are we?”

“I don't know,” Jared said. “I don't care.”

Jensen raised an eyebrow.

“I got you back,” Jared went on. “We could be on the moon for all I care.”

“You got me – the fuck happened? I thought I heard someone in trouble, a girl, so I went looking for her, and then... I don't remember.” He scrunched up his forehead, apparently thinking. “Did I fall in an abandoned mine or something?”

“Something like that.” How was Jared going to explain this? Where should he start? What could he say that wouldn't make Jensen think he was crazy? “It doesn't matter. You're okay now.”

“I guess.” Jensen didn't look convinced, so Jared kissed him again. Jensen only half responded, but that was okay. It wasn't a long kiss, and he was no doubt still trying to work out what had happened to him, why he and Jared were standing outside a cave nowhere near Pluto, maybe not even in the New Mexico Territory, and why he couldn't remember where he'd been.

“We should go home,” Jensen said uncertainly.

“We should.”

Jared released him and they made their way down the hill and across the scrub until they saw the sun dropping below the horizon. But that just told them which way they were facing. It didn't tell them where they were. It didn't tell them which way was home.

Well, Jared had gone east to find the devil, so now he and Jensen should start walking west.

“Don't you have a horse?” Jensen asked. “Why are we walking?”

“I don't know where he is.”

“You what?” Jensen stopped. Jared turned to look at him and off to the side, maybe twenty feet away, was his horse, head down, calmly cropping the scrubby grass. How had Jared not seen him before?

“Harley!” he yelled. The horse's head came up and he trotted over. He must have wandered away from the little camp. But where was the camp? Where were Jared's provisions and supplies, his bedroll, his rifle? 

The horse nudged Jared's shoulder.

“I'm glad to see you too,” Jared said. Jensen patted the horse's flank. Harley nudged Jared harder and took a step forward, evidently trying to push Jared ahead of him. “Where's our camp, Harley? Where did you come from?”

Harley just pushed his nose into Jared's back. Jensen stifled a laugh as Jared let himself be herded away from the devil's back door. The sun was sinking below the horizon and it was getting harder to see, but Harley knew where they were going.

The sun had vanished and the moon had risen by the time they found the camp Jared had set up what felt like a year ago. Harley went back to nibbling on the grass. Jared and Jensen built a fire, unpacked some dried meat, raisins, biscuits, and the near-empty bottle of whiskey Jared had brought, and made dinner. Jared dug out the tobacco and rolling papers so Jensen could roll himself a cigarette if he wanted.

“Are you going to tell me what happened?” Jensen asked eventually.

“You won't believe me,” Jared said.

“Try me.” Jensen's face was serious in the firelight, and Jared noticed suddenly that he didn't have any more of a beard than he had the day he disappeared. They'd only been a day out of Pluto then, and he only had as much stubble as he'd grown since the previous Sunday. He should have a full beard by now. He didn't.

How much time had passed for him, in the devil's cave? Had he only been down there a day or two, while weeks passed aboveground?

“The devil took you,” Jared said.

Jensen's face didn't change. He'd always been a terrible person to play poker against, for that reason. Jared had known him long enough to be able to recognize some of his tells, but no one else would ever know from looking at his face what he was holding in his hand, what he was thinking.

And Jared couldn't tell now.

“The devil took me,” Jensen repeated.

“I said you wouldn't believe me.”

“How long have I been gone?”

“Three weeks.”

“Three weeks? Shit.”

“How long did you think it was?”

“I don't know.” Jensen shrugged, his hands out, palms up. “I don't know what happened to me, why I'm here, why we're not anywhere near Pluto – are we still even in the territory? Are we in Texas?”

“I think so. Yeah. I mean, no, we're not in Texas. I went east, looking for you. I just... I knew that was the right direction.”

“How did you find me?”

Jared opened his mouth, closed it again. Asking Jensen to believe the devil took him was one thing. He believed in the devil. But asking him to believe that Jared had ridden the ghost of a Comanche pony down into a canyon and up to the devil's door? Jared was the one who believed in the potentiality of fairytales. Jared was the one who believed that somehow, somewhere, in some fashion, they could be true.

Jared believed in ghosts. Jensen never had.

“Jared? How did you know where I was?”

“A ghost pony brought me.”

Now it was Jensen's turn to open his mouth, think better of what he was going to say, and close it again. He put his plate on the ground, reached for his tobacco and papers, and idly rolled himself a cigarette.

“You don't believe me,” Jared said.

“The thing is, I think I do. This is like one of your mother's fairytales, isn't it? Boy's best friend is kidnapped by the devil, boy captures a ghost horse to get the friend back.” He laughed suddenly, surprised and amused. “I'm your damsel in distress! Jesus, Jared, you turned me into your fucking princess in peril.”

“Not on purpose.”

“No, I know.” Jensen lit the cigarette off the campfire and took a drag. He blew a slow stream of smoke off to the side and shook his head. “You rescued me from the devil. Shit. The minister's going to have a field day with this when we get back. The wages of sin, you know.”

_And what sins have you committed_ , Jared thought, _that were so bad as to bring the devil to you? You're not crazy in love with your best friend._

But how could he know that for sure? There were different kinds of love, and it took different forms for different people. Believing Jared's ridiculous – if true – story about his rescue could be Jensen's way of showing his love.

“Okay,” Jensen said eventually. “The devil stole me away like we're in some fairytale, and you found a ghost horse to take you to his front door so you could make a deal for my freedom. What did you promise him?” He sounded more curious than anything else. If the situation had been reversed, Jared would have been more worried.

“The devil was a woman,” Jared said. “Or she used to be a woman. I, um, I promised we have to go back in a year – exactly a year from now – so I can tell her stories for twenty-four hours and she can, uh, she can study you for twenty-four hours.”

“Study me?” Jensen quirked an eyebrow, then grinned. “The devil's a woman and she thinks I'm pretty?”

“No, she – Well, she might think you're pretty, but she wants to – It's because you don't look at Danneel's girls with lust. Everyone has some reaction when they see them in front of the house, or out on the streets, or in church – you know how people whisper when they come to services on Sunday – but you don't. She wants to know why.”

It sounded so strange and so incomprehensible coming out of his mouth. Jared wasn't sure he'd believe it, if he was just hearing the story now.

Jensen just shrugged again. “What did you tell her?”

“About you? I didn't tell her anything. I don't think she would've listened to me anyway. She wants to figure you out herself.”

“She's very hands-on, huh? Can't blame her.” He grinned around his cigarette. Jared wanted to insist that this was serious, that he'd been out of his mind thinking he could lose Jensen forever, that he was prepared to trade his life for Jensen to go back to Pluto, that there were a million reasons it wasn't funny, that Jensen shouldn't take it so lightly, but Jensen's grin was infectious and he was here, solid, sitting in front of a campfire next to Jared, close enough to touch if Jared wanted to.

And Jared wanted to.

“So we have to come back here in a year?” Jensen went on. “How do you even know where 'here' is?”

“I don't.” Jared scraped his knife over the bottom of the pan and gingerly licked the blade. It tasted like cast iron and the residue of hundreds of meals. “But I think I can find the spot where I saw the ghost ponies. When we get home we'll find a good map and figure it out.”

“Okay.” Jensen shook his head again, smiling a little. “This is crazy. Three weeks, really? It feels like longer, and it feels like it's only been a day. Jesus.”

He stood, stretched, walked away from the camp so he could relieve himself. Jared watched his back, afraid to look away. He was going to keep both eyes on Jensen until they got back to Pluto, even in his sleep.

They cleaned up, got ready for bed. Jared spread his blanket on the ground and when Jensen lay down next to the fire, Jared lay behind him, so close he imagined he could feel Jensen's spine against his chest, through Jensen's coat and both of their shirts. He pulled the rest of the blanket over both of them and wrapped an arm around Jensen's ribs, felt his chest rise and fall with his breath.

“I'm not going to vanish in the middle of the night,” Jensen said.

“You don't know that,” Jared said into his shoulder. Jensen just chuckled.

“You're never going to leave me alone after this, are you.” But he didn't sound bothered by that. “I can't believe you rescued me from the devil. I can't believe I even believe your story.”

“It's because you love me.”

“That must be it.”

Jensen put his hand over Jared's and laced their fingers together. Jared grinned hugely against Jensen's shoulder.

_You don't drink, you don't fuck...._ But it didn't matter. The devil stole Jensen away from Jared, and Jared found a way to get him back. And Jensen loved him.

They'd come back in a year and fulfill the bargain Jared and the devil made. The devil had kept her end and let Jensen go, and it was nothing to Jared to give up a day of his year, and a day of Jensen's, to pay her back. Jensen was worth that. Jensen was worth more than that.

Jared listened to him breathing now, slow and even in sleep, and wondered what he was dreaming about. Had he slept in the devil's cave? Had he dreamed? Could he have guessed Jared would come for him? He certainly knew now. Whatever trouble he was in, it couldn't be any worse than this, and whatever it was, Jared would rescue him from it.

He was Jared's damsel in distress, his princess in peril. His Rapunzel, his Sleeping Beauty, his Eurydice.

Jared chuckled. Jensen was certainly pretty enough.

_I'm never going to leave you alone_ , Jared thought, _you were right about that. You'll never shake me after this._

But he didn't think Jensen would mind.

In the morning they packed up and headed out, both of them managing to fit on the horse's back, much to his annoyance. They followed Jared's compass west, angling a little south after a while when Jared became convinced they were going to pass too far north of Pluto. Jensen said all they needed was a town, any town, and they could find their way from there, but Jared didn't want to waste time traversing the desert now that he had Jensen back.

Besides, as far as he could tell, there wasn't any civilization out here besides the two of them. There were no towns to find.

As they rode, Jared wondered what they were going to tell everyone in Pluto, once they finally got there. How could either he or Jensen explain this to Danneel and her girls, or Rob and Rich, or Eddie, or Christian?

Well, Eddie and Christian might understand. The minister would understand. The minister would be wrong, but he'd accept a version of Jared's story. The sheriff, who'd sent Jared and Jensen on the occasional mission to another town, or just to the mine to keep the peace, who'd hired them to go to Albuquerque to retrieve a crate of mining equipment – he was used to level-headed men. He'd think Jared had lost his mind, talking about kidnappings and the devil.

Brianna might believe the same version of the story that the minister did, because she'd let Jared take her crucifix, because a hidden part of her really did think the devil was abroad in the untamed parts of the world. But the rest of the girls would probably laugh, thinking this was just another tale he thought was interesting enough to tell them. Genevieve would shake her head and chuckle, humoring him. And Rob and Rich? Or Chad? They weren't even going to pretend to take him seriously, even though Rob and Rich were there when Jensen disappeared, and they knew as well as Jared did that there was nowhere for him to go, and he was too aware of the landscape to get lost or fall into a hole. Chad was just going to laugh and tease them both.

It took longer to get home than it had taken Jared to search, and when they finally crested a hill one early afternoon and saw Pluto in the distance, Jensen thought it was a mirage.

“Don't laugh at me,” he grumbled at Jared, when Jared did. “I was kidnapped by the devil because she thought I was interesting. I was down there for three weeks but it felt like a day, or a year. You're the one who believes in ghost towns. Maybe you're rubbing off on me.”

But Jared knew it was home. He wasn't sure what day it was, or what month, but he was sure that was really Pluto. It looked the same. And the lost traveler always came home, didn't he? The fairytale was a cautionary tale – don't take food from strangers, don't agree to something without being clear on the terms, be kind to old women. In the end, if you listened to your common sense and followed the rules of the world you were in, you'd be rewarded with your own bed again.

Besides, god wouldn't be so cruel as to let Jared find Jensen and then deny them the chance to go home. And from the minute he rode out of Pluto in search of Jensen, Jared had been sure that he would find him and bring him back.

Orpheus hadn't gotten a long life or a happy ending after he'd turned around to see if Eurydice was really following him, to make sure the Lord of the Underworld had really kept his bargain. But Jared had acted as if he trusted the devil, and the devil had given Jensen back. And that meant they were going to get their long life together, and their happy ending.

They rode down around the mine and into Pluto, dusty and tired and sore, getting maybe ten feet down the main street before the sheriff, of all people, walked out of the barbershop and saw them.

Jared and Jensen both wanted something to eat and drink. They wanted to wash the desert off themselves. But Jared didn't mind stopping there in the middle of the street to answer all of Sheriff Morgan's questions. He didn't think the sheriff would believe him, but now that he was home, now that he'd found Jensen and completed his quest, now that he'd met the devil and lived to tell the story – now he wanted to share.

The sheriff was followed by more people, everyone wanting to know where Jared and Jensen had been. So few people were ever found after having gone missing. Even if there was a bounty on their heads, there was always a chance they'd just vanish into the wilderness or Mexico and never be seen again. Soon there was a growing crowd in the street, people asking questions and wanting answers and praising god and suggesting criminal activities and just talking, talking, talking.

“Leave them alone,” Sheriff Morgan finally had to say, pushing the crowd aside so Jared could guide his horse down the street and to the boarding house. Jared would have stayed and repeated his story to everyone in town, but he could tell that Jensen wasn't ready to be among crowds yet, that he wanted to be alone to wash and eat and enjoy being home again. Someone must have told Miss Ferris, the landlady, that they were back, because she came outside and stood on the porch, wiping her hands on a towel and looking like she was trying not to smile.

The first thing she did, after Jared and Jensen had tied Harley to the post in front of the boarding house, was give Jensen a hug. He seemed surprised but hugged her back. Jared was next, and then she shooed them inside to wash their faces and change their clothes and oh, they owed her for the weeks they were gone.

She wouldn't let anyone follow them, much to Jensen's relief, but they hadn't been in their room five minutes before someone knocked on the door. Danneel pushed it open and stomped in, wordlessly grabbing first Jensen and then Jared in a hug.

“Miss Ferris already tried to suffocate us,” Jensen said, after she let them both go.

“You _asshole_ ,” she said, punching him on the arm. “Don't ever do that again. And you” - she rounded on Jared - “you lunatic, what were you thinking? You weren't supposed to be gone for a month!”

“I had to find him,” he explained. He hadn't meant to worry anyone – he'd only meant to get Jensen back. But he wasn't apologizing, only explaining.

“You're not even sorry.”

“Not for that.”

“You're an asshole too.”

“I'm sorry?”

She made a frustrated noise. Jared noticed out of the corner of his eye that Jensen was trying not to smile.

“This isn't funny!” Danneel practically yelled at him, having noticed as well. “Don't you look like you're going to laugh at me!”

“The devil kidnapped me, Danny,” Jensen said. “Everything's funny after that.”

“The devil...?” She gaped at him, at Jared, and then closed her mouth and narrowed her eyes at both of them. “You are both fucking lunatics and if you ever disappear like that again I will never forgive you.” And then she turned on her heel and swept out of the room, muttering to herself in French.

“What was that?” Jared asked.

“She was worried,” Jensen said. He sat on the bed.

“No, I know that, but what was she saying?”

“You mean as she left? I don't know, but I don't think it was nice.”

“We should go over there.”

“I know. I'm surprised she didn't bring all the girls with her.”

“Miss Ferris wouldn't have let them in the front door.” Jared sat on the bed next to Jensen. He was a little surprised the landlady had even let Danneel in that far, although it was more likely that Danneel had just bullied her way inside.

“I need a bath before we go anywhere,” Jensen said. He wrinkled his nose. “You need a bath too.”

“I need something to eat.” Jared's stomach rumbled. Jensen stifled a laugh. Jared elbowed him in the side. “Food first, bath second, Danny's third. We can't walk into her place looking like this.” He gestured at the pants and shirts and coats they'd been wearing for weeks straight, the dust on their boots, the fact that they were both bearded and in need of a shave.

“Bath now, food after. I don't want to get dust all over the dining room. Miss Ferris needs her own bathhouse so we can just sneak out the back and not have to talk to anyone. When we get to Danny's we'll probably disrupt business and she'll yell at us again, and I want to be clean and fed when she does it.”

“Jensen.”

“Yeah?” Jensen turned his head to look at Jared. His eyes were bright. He didn't even look tired.

“I wasn't always sure I'd find you.”

“I would've been sure, if I'd known you were looking for me.”

“How?” The territories were big, and they were both mere men, and Jared had no idea where Jensen had gone. How could Jensen be so sure Jared would find him?

“The knight always rescues the princess, right?”

Because even though the myths Jared knew ended badly for people, his fairytales had happy endings.

He leaned in and kissed Jensen on the mouth, and this time Jensen kissed back.

When Jared pulled away, he realized he was grinning to split his face. If this was all he ever got, if Jensen returning his kiss was the farthest it ever went, he would be content. It meant Jensen hadn't changed, the devil hadn't swapped him out for a changeling, and he loved Jared back.

It was enough.

“Food and drink, then bath,” Jared said, trying to get himself back on track, reminding himself that they were hungry, thirsty, and dirty, and if they showed up in Danneel's parlor looking like this, she'd kick them out and refuse them entry until they cleaned up. The girls would have to go out into the street to welcome them back.

So they changed their clothes, went downstairs to eat in the boarding house dining room, let Miss Ferris shoo away any curious boarders, and made their way to the bathhouse and then the brothel.

They did disrupt Danneel's house. Brianna even jumped off a client's lap to run over to Jared and Jensen to hug them and kiss them on both cheeks. Jared was quite surprised to find Misha and Sebastian sitting at one of the poker tables – he would have thought Alona and her entourage would have moved on to their next stop already – but they both got up to shake his and Jensen's hands.

“We are so glad you are not dead,” Sebastian said, surprising Jared yet again by actually saying something he could understand, even with the heavy accent of someone who spoke English as at least a third language, and infrequently at that. “Alona was.” He paused and looked at Misha. “Was. _Cum se supne 'ingrijorata'?_ ” Misha raised an eyebrow. “ _Bespokoilas_.”

“Worried,” Misha said to Jared and Jensen. “She was concerned that you had taken her tale seriously.”

“She told me about a girl who was trapped in a mountain,” Jared explained to Jensen, “who would steal you away unless you knew her real name. If you could give it to her, she'd let you go and be freed herself. I thought it might help me find you.”

Jensen just shook his head, but he was smiling.

“We leave tomorrow afternoon,” Misha went on. “We rearranged things to wait for your return. Will you join us for breakfast? We would like to hear your story.”

Jensen eventually had to hide in the kitchen to escape everyone's questions. Now that he was back and standing in front of them, Sebastian and Misha didn't want to wait to find out what had happened to him. Jared was left to assuage the curiosity of everyone in the house. Even Genevieve came by, having heard they were back.

Danneel helped keep the peace, mainly by giving her girls the hairy eyeball until they left Jared alone and turned the full force of their attention back to the house's patrons.

Then Chad appeared, called Jared a mad bastard, and bought the entire house a round of drinks to celebrate Jared and Jensen's safe return.

It took days for them to explain to everyone what had happened. Everyone in town wanted to know, and a lot of people wanted to hear the story more than once. Jared told the truth – the devil did it – and his story never really changed, although the more he told it, the more he figured out how to refine it for his audience. And if only half the town only half believed him, well, they'd thought he was crazy for going to look for Jensen in the first place, so what did it matter if they thought he was crazy for the story he kept telling?

He endured the teasing and the mockery. It was easy, now that he had Jensen back, now that he knew he could walk into the underworld, make a deal with the devil for what he needed, and walk right back out again.

In a year he and Jensen would return to her cave and keep their end of the bargain. And in the meantime, he'd retell the story as often as he had to, as often as anyone wanted him to, and if it spread, well, the best stories always did.

Jared wondered if the story would travel outside of Pluto, carried on the railroad or in the back of a wagon or a stagecoach, making its way across the slowly civilizing west. He wondered if his reckless, determined actions had planted the seed for him and Jensen to become the stars of their own fairytale, the creators of a new myth. Would their story someday inspire someone else, the way Alona's story of the girl in the mountain had inspired him, misguided as it was, and would it someday save someone else, the way Scheherazade had saved him?

He hoped so. He loved the unsettled, wild west, dangerous as it could be, and he wanted to be part of its history. He'd wanted to leave his mark on it, somehow, somewhere, and these weeks of insanity – Jensen going missing, Jared going after him, the ghost ponies, the devil, the deal – might be the way to do it.

People didn't have to believe him. He and Jensen knew the truth. People just had to listen, and share.

* * *

_“Tell me a story,” the devil said. “Give me your time.”_

_And so the young man told him about a beautiful, clever girl who distracted a great king and thereby saved the life of her sisters. Perhaps he meant to sway the devil. Perhaps it was merely the first tale that came to mind._

_Who can know the devil's heart? What might help one man may hinder another, and the devil is a canny creature who does not like to lose. But the young man had faith in himself and in his love for his captive friend, and the story he told stirred something in the devil's breast._

_“You will return in a year's time,” the devil told him, “and you will tell me another story. In exchange, I will let your friend go. He will follow you out of my kingdom. You will not hear his footsteps, but he will be there.”_

_The young man and the devil shook hands to seal their bargain, and the young man took his leave of hell._

_He did not look behind him as he walked. He had no reason to trust the devil, for no man does, but he had traveled far and risked much, and he had not come such a distance, and bested such a foe, to chance losing his friend._

_But both men emerged into the sunlight of the world of men. And a year later they returned so that the young man might tell the devil another story._

_For the devil keeps his word, and he expects the same of you._

**Author's Note:**

> thanks!  
> dear-tiger, for excessive amounts of squee, jokes about the devil not having a fridge, critiquing my paragraphs, asking questions, translating Russian, and sharing the story of Azovka (aka the girl in the mountain who needs her name back, who isn't actually the devil)  
> bleodswean, for speedy and enthusiastic beta-reading  
> amberdreams, for some pretty nifty art, despite prior commitments to bears and other bangs  
> belleweather, for the Romanian  
> lux--aeterna, for [Very Deep Went Down the Well](http://lux--aeterna.livejournal.com/141245.html)  
> crotalus-atrox, for Come to Scorch County, They Said (which has sadly vanished off the internets)  
> paleogymnast and omgspnbigbang, for camaraderie, encouragement, and a writing/word count challenge that I totally failed >.< but which still helped me  
> wendy, for modding and generally being pretty fab  
> and "Hell on Wheels" and _True Grit_ and _The Magnificent Seven_ and _Unforgiven_ and _Two Mules for Sister Sara_ and _Tombstone_ and _The Quick and the Dead_ and _Open Range_ and every other western I've ever seen  
> ...even "Firefly"
> 
> babbly author's note [here](http://tsuki-no-bara.livejournal.com/1873106.html).


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